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March is in like a lion

Reviews of lots of different genres this month, paranormal romance (Its MJ Rose, its good), history, bio and some cracking thrillers.

The Witch of Painted Sorrows, MJ Rose

Sandrine Salome leaves 19^th Century New York, fleeing both her sterile marriage and her grief over her father’s death. Arriving in Paris she is drawn to the opulent home, Maison de la Lune, where her father grew up and where her grandmother, a famed courtesan, still holds court. She finds the house shuttered, her grandmother claims that the place needs extensive restoration and Sandrine believes her, at first.

Going by her maiden name Sandrine Verlaine she becomes enchanted by Paris and her rekindled desire to paint coupled with her exploration of all that is sensuous and passionate opens a passage to the past, to the original owner, La Lune. Parts of the house that have been closed off for centuries open for Sandrine and the young architect who will become her lover.

Her grandmother refuses to discuss family history with Sandrine, saying love destroys the women of the Verlaine line because it lets ‘her’ in but the arrival of Sandrine’s husband, convinced she has evidence that could bring him down causes Sandrine to unleash powerful forces that could lead to her destruction.

All the Old Knives, Olen Steinhauer

Carmel, California: the waitress seats two former colleagues, a still-pretty woman wearing a wedding ring and a careworn older man at the only non-reserved table in the overpriced restaurant. The couple, Henry and Celia, used to be lovers but this isn’t a cozy catch-up.

Henry is CIA, Celia used to be; until a disastrous airplane hijacking put the Vienna office under a microscope. Personally and professionally Henry and the rest of his team barely survived the fallout. Now, six years later, rumours of a mole have resurfaced and Henry has been sent to question everyone involved and bury the case once and for all.

Tonight’s meal comes with a side of revenge and betrayal. 

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Eric Larson

For many of us who sat through history class, we think we know that the sinking of the Lusitania was the incident that brought the U.S. into WW1, and we are wrong.

Larson, hooked by the records of that last voyage presents a more expanded, no less disturbing view. He uses a myriad of documentation from Cunard, Woodrow Wilson’s papers, Winston Churchill’s memoirs and the log of U20 the U-boat that sank the Lusitania to bring the events surrounding the sinking to life.

The Bullet, Mary Louise Kelly

Caroline Cashion is an accomplished professor of French literature. She leads an academic life surrounded by a close and loving family; until a routine medical procedure takes everything she thinks she knows and shreds it into little pieces. 

Caroline has a bullet lodged in her neck, close to the base of her skull. Evidence of the murder of her real parents, this lump of lead could help identify her birth parents’ killer. Can justice be served over three decades later, or is the killer willing to come out of hiding to kill again.

Hammer Head, Nina MacLaughlin

Nina MacLaughlin’s day job as a journalist is steady, brings in a solid paycheck and yet she knows it isn’t what she wants to do for the rest of her life. Answering a Craigslist ad for ‘carpenter’s assistant: woman strongly urged to apply’ Nina tries out and gets the job. To start with she doesn’t know a Philips from a Flathead but she’s willing to learn and Mary is more than willing to teach her.  

Her work with Mary, an experienced carpenter takes Nina from typing virtual sentences in cyberspace to building physical lasting objects in the real world. Nina transforms her attitude, her body and her mind in the process.

An inspiring book, that shows us that there is more out there than the nine to five grind if we go looking for it.